Archive

Quotes

My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

—Frederick the Great, c. 1770

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

—Tacitus, c. 117

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

—E.B. White, 1944

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

—George Borrow, 1843

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

—Paul Valéry, 1943

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

—Laozi, c. 500 BC

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

—Hannah Arendt, 1958